Friday night topic: Do you grow your own?

Our garden is filled with edible goodness this time of year. There's forest of lettuce comprised of at least four different varieties, plus kale, tomatoes, carrots, peas, beets, potatoes, raspberries, all sorts of different herbs, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. The spoils are always delicious; even a relatively mundane salad can deliver an explosion of flavor when the ingredients are picked minutes before serving. Nothing compares to that kind of freshness.

Personal and community vegetable gardens are popping up all over the place here in Vancouver. I see more and more of them taking over back yards, spilling into front yards, and squeezing onto apartment balconies. There are even a few in the, ahem, seedier parts of town. Like, right next to people selling heroin. It's weird, and probably not strictly organic.

The home gardening scene seems to be growing outside the Pacific Northwest, too, particularly in bigger cities. There are also some intriguing techie twists, like Arduino-based systems that optimize light and nutrient delivery for optimal growth. You know, for vegetables. And stuff.

TR readers tend to be do-it-yourself types, so I'm curious: do any of you grow your own food? Have you noticed any uptick in the number of folks who do? Are you sick of people bragging about the home-grown kale they had for dinner last night? Discuss.